My Heads To The Wall

I've changed so much and when I consider how I am different I'm pleased.  The situations I review are not something I find particularly pleasant.  I am practicing putting things aside.  I tend to run over things in my mind, over and over.  When something is fresh, or emotional, or something that is challenging me, this over thinking can be as exhausting as the situation itself.  Then it passes and I start to find my level place.

Some situations are best left to themselves, to not feed them or poke at them and draw them back to see if they will bite you or not.  They will.  It's frustrating to walk away, to not do those things and have them pursue you, nipping at your heels looking for a fight.

The last piece of my past, in drama saturated fashion, is passing away.  The drama is one sided, and appropriately juvenile in execution.

Looking at it, not responding, and watching it grow on itself with no involvement from me has been an education, and a little depressing and draining.  Each time it nips at me, and I find myself thinking about it, avoiding being engaged, and move past it, she'll message me or text me with these superior and fatalistic statements, and I am at the beginning of processing it out again.  I'm reminded of John and my mother.  They'd each provoke and swarm like red ants biting, biting, stinging until I'd respond out of simple self preservation.  The look in their eyes of triumph was always disturbing.

When I cut my family off, when I finally left John despite still being in love with him, I changed. I no longer allow people to draw me into those situations.  That thing in me that would pull for me to respond, to defend against things I didn't need to defend against, to fix, to find a peaceful resolution.  I'm done.  Don't get me wrong.  I can't help but see it, I understand it is happening, I might even try to have a real conversation at first if it seems worth it... but someone that is out for emotional blood, for battle for the sake of battle... I don't play along. 

I have personally observed and learned people like that are seeking a release.  Creating the situation, putting someone else on the defensive, causing the drama but not taking responsibility for it but forcing someone else to, gives them a release.  A sense of winning.

I don't operate that way inside myself, I know some do but it doesn't help me understand it.  Now I don't need to understand it.  I recognize it for what it is now, I also won't be drawn in anymore.  Unfortunately I still find it in my head while they continue to try to worry at the rag they've ripped from the foundation of the relationship to rape and pillage and wear out. 

So that sucks. 

I've been waiting for her to make good on her promise to be okay with us not being friends anymore, to delete me from facebook, to not contact me anymore.  I refuse to give her the excuse to put it on me, so I am won't tell her to fuck herself, but I am tired of her badgering me.

It would seem the catalyst was Brian.  Her interest in whether or not I was investing in him was too strange.  But I don't think that's what it was.  Brian doesn't matter to either one of us.  The truth is she's over our friendship for whatever reason, she's created this, she's projecting her bullshit life onto mine so she doesn't have to deal with herself honestly.  She's using me for a release because she hasn't attacked me in a while, because I was always the non-judgmental friend that would defend and try to fix it.  Because she figured I was a safe and easy target.

I haven't responded in the ways I know she's expected me to and it feels good to not be that girl anymore. 

I just wish I didn't feel tired or affected.  I'm not hurt, I'm not overly sad, I'm not feeling a strong need to respond.  A few times I've started to.  Had my say.  Then deleted it.  I've learned to respond is to feed into it.  Then it is all consuming and nothing is accomplished but that other person gets what they need, the release.  Not responding doesn't mean I am not aware of her perverse need to try to get one.  I finally see it for what it is and I'm that person I was before in our friendship.  Maybe that's why.  I'm not a  pawn anymore. 

Here I am writing about it.  She's still managed to get me thinking.  That annoys me and I am learning to put it off more quickly, but it's there right now, and she keeps inputting it working for a response she can grab onto to turn into a fight.

It's sad and freeing to realize she was part of that last connection to my past.  To that person I was that could be manipulated that way.  I could keep her in my life, play into it, but I'm changing.  I don't want to, I don't need to. 

I've worked damn hard to be this woman I am now.  I like myself.  I am stronger. I want more for my life.  To enrich and to be enriched.  To not cast my pearls before swine.

I have learned from these three, mirrors of each other: Mother, Friend, Love

I feel I learned the most from John.  I believe it is because I loved him.  I really loved him unconditionally and for a time that was a very beautiful thing.  It was selfless, without expectation.  Then still loving him I had to choose a better way.  Making that choice changed something in me.  With my mother I was a child she didn't like very much, her definitions we rigid, her issues projected onto me, and me with a hunger to be loved as a child should be by her mother.  With my friend wanting the same acceptance I gave, wanting to be able to be just be myself and loved in friendship.  With my mother and my friend there was a sense that it should have been what it was meant to be.  Was that sense there with John? Of course.  But something with him was different, I can't qualify it.

Having known that love I had for him magnified the lack of it in certain other relationships.  I learned to expect more than just scraps tossed down to me while I gave so much of myself away.  It actually changed everything.  I'd learned to make the hard decisions, to stand on my own. 

The relationships I am developing now are more mutual and the difference is astonishing. 

Like with Brian, looking back over what I wrote about my experiences the last few weeks I see it.  I don't want to settle.  I learned from him what I was intended to learn.  Things are starting to move that way, situations I am actually learning from and it isn't taking Years to sink in, merely moments.  I'm allowing things to go that are Meant to go.  It's been difficult.  I have lost so much over my life, but quantity isn't necessarily quality.  I've learned sometimes the value I'd placed on certain people or things was far from accurate  I don't have to hold on for the sake of holding on so I don't have to lose something.  Sometimes losing is gaining.

I'm trying to come to terms with how to move forward.  I'm basic.  I have my routines: home, kids, work.  When opportunities come up to do something I take them when I can so I can have a sense of forward momentum.  The last few days I am tired.  I felt a little like I wasn't moving forward anymore (like I was moving backward) because I was struggling with these two people's behavior internally.  Without engaging in this drama I am still sort of worn out.  I'm learning hard lessons, losing someone I felt was a friend of 25 years.  Allowing myself to dump a guy even though he's going through a lot.  That was empowering for me.  I didn't allow my empathy to cloud my needs and overshadow importance of the things I am trying to built for myself.

I don't expect calm winds and following seas, but I am ready for some.